Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Wigmore Hall Live Releases New CD

“Everything that happens in your life - the good and the bad - is somewhere in my box of song texts or lieder or French song," said Simon Keenlyside in an interview with The Guardian in 2007. In two Wigmore Hall recitals with Malcolm Martineau in October 2008, he covered considerable musical, thematic and emotional ground with a selection of songs by Schubert (including two of the most famous, An Silvia and Ständchen), six of Wolf’s Mörike-Lieder, settings of Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine and other, lesser-known French poets by Fauré, and Ravel’s five whimsical and discreetly anthropomorphic animal portraits, Histoires naturelles.Mr. Keenlyside’s Wigmore Hall recital of 26 October 2008 is now available on a new Wigmore Hall Live recording (catalogue no. WHLive0031).

BBC Music Magazine has described Mr. Keenlyside as “the greatest lyric baritone of our time, indeed one of the greatest of any time. He submerges his personality in the roles he portrays, and does it with virtually unique insight and completeness. Everything is built, however, on superb breath control and a remarkable capacity for colouring the voice, combined with flawless legato, the principles underlying all great singing.” While the subject there was a recording of operatic arias, the same praise could apply to Mr. Keenlyside in recital: he is thought of as an artist who does not self-consciously impose his interpretation on a song or on the audience; he subtly allows the words and the notes to speak for themselves.

SIMON KEENLYSIDESimon Keenlyside was born in London, studied zoology at Cambridge and singing at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

He made his operatic debut at the Hamburg State Opera as Count Almaviva (Le Nozze diFigaro). He has since sung in Geneva (Hamlet and Pelléas), Zurich (Don Giovanni), Barcelona (Don Giovanni and Hamlet), Madrid (Posa), San Francisco (Pelléas), Sydney (Figaro), Berlin (Figaro), Brussels (Orfeo), Paris (Papageno, Pelléas, Guglielmo, Yeletsky, Dandini and Wozzeck), Vienna (Eugene Onegin, Figaro, Marcello, Count Almaviva, Billy Budd, Don Giovanni, Papageno and Posa), Munich (Marcello, Count Almaviva and Wolfram), Tokyo (Don Giovanni with La Monnaie and Wolfram with the Bayerische Staatsoper), at the Metropolitan Opera, New York (Belcore, Marcello, Papageno and Count Almaviva), the Salzburg Festival (Guglielmo and Papageno) and Salzburg Easter Festival (Pelléas), La Scala, Milan (Papageno and Count Almaviva under Muti), in Ferrara (Don Giovanni under Abbado), and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (Billy Budd under Hickox; Count Almaviva and Ford under Haitink; Don Giovanni under Mackerras; Valentin, Pelléas and Posa under Pappano; Belcore, Marcello, Guglielmo under Colin Davis; Papageno under Colin Davis and Mackerras; Hamlet under Langrée; Prospero in the world premiere of The Tempest under Adès; and Oreste under Bolton). For Billy Budd at the English National Opera and Winston in the world premiere of 1984 at the Royal Opera House, he won the 2006 Olivier Award for outstanding achievement in opera. In 2007 he was given the ECHO Klassik award for male Singer of the Year.

He will return to the Vienna State Opera (Macbeth), Metropolitan Opera (Hamlet) and the Royal Opera House (Posa, Macbeth).

Mr. Keenlyside enjoys extensive concert work, appearing with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Abbado, Berlin Philharmonic under Abbado, City of Birmingham Symphony under Rattle, London Symphony Orchestra under Colin Davis, Philharmonia Orchestra under von Dohnányi and Sawallisch, Cleveland Orchestra under Welser-Moest, Vienna Philharmonic under Muti, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under Mackerras, and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra under Welser-Moest.

Simon Keenlyside has appeared in recital in New York, San Francisco, Lisbon, Geneva, Moscow, Paris, Amsterdam, Ferrara, Rome, Brussels, London, Graz, the Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, Salzburg, Munich and Schwarzenberg Schubertiade Festivals, at La Scala Milan, and both the Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna. He sang in Trisha Brown’s choreographed Winterreise at the Holland, Mostly Mozart (New York), Lucerne and Melbourne Festivals, at the Barbican, London and La Monnaie, Brussels.

For EMI he has recorded two recital discs with Malcolm Martineau, of Schubert and Strauss, and - for Hyperion - a disc of Schumann lieder with Graham Johnson.He has also recorded Des Knaben Wunderhorn under Rattle for EMI, the title role in Don Giovanni under Abbado for DG, Carmina Burana under Thielemann for DG, Marcello in La Bohème under Chailly for Decca, the title role in Billy Budd under Hickox, Papageno in The Magic Flute under Mackerras for Chandos and Count Almaviva in the Grammy® award-winning Le Nozze di Figaro under Jacobs for Harmonia Mundi.For Sony BMG he has released an orchestral arias disc which won the Gramophone 2007 best recital award, and an operetta disc with Angelika Kirchschlager.

Mr. Keenlyside’s appearances in New York City during the 2009-10 season include a solo recital in Alice Tully Hall (28 February 2010) and the title role in a new production of Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet at the Metropolitan Opera (16 March – 9 April 2010).

MALCOLM MARTINEAUMalcolm Martineau was born in Edinburgh, read music at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and studied at the Royal College of Music.

Malcolm Martineau has presented his own series at St. John’s, Smith Square (the complete songs of Debussy and Poulenc), Wigmore Hall (a Britten and a Poulenc series broadcast by the BBC) and at the Edinburgh Festival (the complete lieder of Hugo Wolf). He has appeared throughout Europe (including London’s Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Royal Opera House; La Scala, Milan; the Châtelet, Paris; the Liceu, Barcelona; Berlin’s Philharmonie and Konzerthaus; Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw; and the Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein), North America (including New York’s Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall), Australia (including the Sydney Opera House) and at the Aix‑en‑Provence, Vienna, Edinburgh, Schubertiade, Munich and Salzburg Festivals.

Recording projects have included Schubert, Schumann and English song recitals with Bryn Terfel for DG; Schubert and Strauss recitals with Simon Keenlyside for EMI; recital recordings with Angela Gheorghiu and Barbara Bonney for Decca, Magdalena Kožená for DG, Della Jones for Chandos, Susan Bullock for Crear Classics, Solveig Kringelborn for NMA and Amanda Roocroft for Onyx; the complete Fauré songs with Sarah Walker and Tom Krause for CRD; the complete Britten Folk Songs for Hyperion; and the complete Beethoven Folk Songs for DG.